That is one huge number...6,632,430 digits long to be exact. The above number was found November 17th by Michael Shafer, a Michigan State University graduate student, and is the largest prime number found (so far). The number is only the 40th . . .
That is one huge number...6,632,430 digits long to be exact. The above number was found November 17th by Michael Shafer, a Michigan State University graduate student, and is the largest prime number found (so far). The number is only the 40th Mersenne prime number discovered, and is the sixth found during the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS) distributed computing project (yes, Prime95 has other uses than a PC torture test!). News of the find became official when the prime was verified independently by two different machines.